Watching Baylor beat Notre Dame in the NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship it was like, well, let’s say women against girls.

Notre Dame was well coached, fairly talented, but they didn’t have an answer for 6-foot-8 Baylor center Brittney Griner who dominated with 26 points, 13 rebounds and five blocked shots.

On another note, be advised that the Azaleas won’t be as brilliant next week during the Masters as you may remember from recent television coverage.

The mild winter has them blooming early, much like around here.

On a personal note, I’ve had a lot of e-mails asking about my wife Rachel.

She is home after four hospital stays and out-patient at the Cleveland Clinic. She is still sick, but on a new medicine that was really, really hard to get. Her spirits are fine but her stomach simply isn’t.

Bobby Petrino is in the hospital with four cracked ribs, a chipped vertebra, sprained neck and multiple contusions, but he’ll probably find a way to watch the NCAA Championship game tonight.

Petrino loves basketball.

On a visit to Wyoming in 2010 friends of his family said Bobby was a very good football player, but a great basketball player.

He has commented on how much he enjoys it.

Unfortunately, for many, especially in the Eastern Time Zone, the game tips off late and runs past bedtime.

Kids on the East Coast may not see much more than the opening tip since the game is 9:23 p.m.

I don’t know how CBS came up with that time, but that’s late for everyone but West Coast if you ask me.

This one though has a little extra going for it as Kentucky and Kansas are the two winningest basketball programs of all time.

Kentucky has 1,907 victories, Kansas 1,897.

In case you were curious, the Razorbacks rank No. 33 with 1,924 wins, but 819 of those came since the arrival of Eddie Sutton and Nolan Richardson.

Maybe there is a hint of irony in the fact my streak started in New Orleans and ends there.

In 1982 I saw North Carolina beat Georgetown in the NCAA Championship in the Super Dome and I made every Final Four until this year.

My bosses, and I certainly agree with them, made the decision not to apply for NCAA Tournament credentials because to be approved we had to sign away our rights to any photographs or video we shot.

I’ll never forget that first tournament though. Dean Smith vs. John Thompson.

Players like Patrick Ewing, James Worthy and a freshman named Michael Jordan.

With a little more than a minute to play Sleepy Floyd gave Georgetown a 62-61 lead but Smith called for Jordan to answer and he did. The Hoyas didn’t take a time out and pushed it up court but in the torrid pace Fred Brown passed the ball to Worthy with two seconds to play and Smith had his first National Championship.

As it turned out it was the perfect year for me to not attend. My wife is still sick. In fact we are sitting in the hospital waiting to be discharged for the fourth time this year. That doesn’t include the eight days as an out patient at the Cleveland Clinic.

The good news is we’ll watch the Final Four together.

Rachel is a huge sports fan. Probably more so than yours truly.

This Final Four looks great on paper, but the games aren’t played on paper.

One thing is certain, it looks like it is Kentucky’s tournament to lose. They are loaded with talent, play hard and well coached.

I’ll miss seeing it, but not too much.

While it looks like Kentucky’s Final Four to lose, anything can happen. Otherwise all the National Champs would have been No. 1 seeds.

Definitely will have more on the NCAA Final Four this week, my first to miss since 1982 when North Carolina beat Georgetown.

Just a quick update for all those who have asked, my wife, Rachel, is back in St. Vincent’s Infirmary.

I took her to the emergency room Friday to get an IV but she was so dehydrated and throwing up so much the doctors wisely chose to admit her.

It was not a good weekend, but she seemed a little better this morning.

At least she had kept a popsicle down for more than an hour when I had to go to work. She wasn’t keeping them down over the weekend. Not even water.

Obviously, the procedure she had at Cleveland Clinic last week was not the solution.

She started a new medicine though, one that took more than a month to get (a story in itself), and she’s resting pretty well.

We play a lot of Words with Friends and Sunday afternoon she laughed out loud. She rang up 115 points on me with one play. If she hadn’t been so happy I might have thrown up.

We’ll be leaving Cleveland this afternoon after Rachel has a procedure done to her stomach.

He was an uneventful time here but a learning experience for sure.

First, this is a clean, friendly city that loves its sports.

And it is very, very serious about St. Patrick’s Day.

The parade attracted a record 500,000 people — the weather was a record 77 degrees — and the sea of green was a huge wandering party.

It was great, although our hotel was at the very end of the parade and became the gathering spot for many of the revelers.

Some, OK, it seemed like most, felt a sense of duty to over celebrate the day with adult beverages.

About five hours after the parade I ordered some food from the bar — the restaurant was closed — and it took about an hour. The place was packed and the bartender said he had never looked more forward to a closing time.

In the eight days here I saw the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and that was good, but the real reason we came was never far from our minds.

We are headed to the Cleveland Clinic for the procedure and then start the long drive home, hopefully it is a road to recovery, but if not, we’ll make the most of it. We still have each other.